Paper | March 2004 | ISBN: 0-691-11894-9
Cloth | March 2004 | ISBN: 0-691-11893-0
288 pp. | 6 x 9 | 52 lline illus.
The field of financial mathematics has developed
tremendously
over the past thirty years, and the underlying
models that have
taken shape in interest rate markets and
bond markets, being much
richer in structure than equity-derivative
models, are
particularly fascinating and complex. This
book introduces the
tools required for the arbitrage-free modelling
of the dynamics
of these markets. Andrew Cairns addresses
not only seminal works
but also modern developments. Refreshingly
broad in scope,
covering numerical methods, credit risk,
and descriptive models,
and with an approachable sequence of opening
chapters, Interest
Rate Models will make readers--be they graduate
students,
academics, or practitioners--confident enough
to develop their
own interest rate models or to price nonstandard
derivatives
using existing models.
The mathematical chapters begin with the
simple binomial model
that introduces many core ideas. But the
main chapters work their
way systematically through all of the main
developments in
continuous-time interest rate modelling.
The book describes fully
the broad range of approaches to interest
rate modelling: short-rate
models, no-arbitrage models, the Heath-Jarrow-Morton
framework,
multifactor models, forward measures, positive-interest
models,
and market models. Later chapters cover some
related topics,
including numerical methods, credit risk,
and model calibration.
Significantly, the book develops the martingale
approach to bond
pricing in detail, concentrating on risk-neutral
pricing, before
later exploring recent advances in interest
rate modelling where
different pricing measures are important.
Andrew J. G. Cairns is Professor of Financial
Mathematics at
Heriot-Watt University in the United Kingdom.
After completing
his Ph.D. in statistics he worked as an actuary
with a major life
insurer, and since rejoining academia he
has specialized in
interest rate modelling and financial risk
management for pension
plans.
Endorsements:
"This book provides an excellent introduction
to the field
of interest-rate modeling for readers at
the graduate level with
a background in mathematics. It covers all
key models and topics
in the field and provides first glances at
practical issues (calibration)
and important related fields (credit risk).
The mathematics is
structured very well."--Rudiger Kiesel,
University of Ulm,
coauthor of Risk-Neutral Valuation
"A very useful book that provides clear
and comprehensive
discussions of the topic that are not easily
available elsewhere."--Edwin
J. Elton, New York University, author of
Modern Portfolio Theory
and Investment Analysis
Paper | March 2004 | ISBN: 0-691-11818-3
320 pp. | 6 x 9 | 30 line illus. 10 halftones.
On May 11, 1997, as millions worldwide watched
a stunning victory
unfold on television, a machine shocked the
chess world by
defeating the defending world champion, Garry
Kasparov. Written
by the man who started the adventure, Behind
Deep Blue reveals
the inside story of what happened behind
the scenes at the two
historic Deep Blue vs. Kasparov matches.
This is also the story
behind the quest to create the mother of
all chess machines. The
book unveils how a modest student project
eventually produced a
multimillion dollar supercomputer, from the
development of the
scientific ideas through technical setbacks,
rivalry in the race
to develop the ultimate chess machine, and
wild controversies to
the final triumph over the world's greatest
human player.
In nontechnical, conversational prose, Feng-hsiung
Hsu, the
system architect of Deep Blue, tells us how
he and a small team
of fellow researchers forged ahead at IBM
with a project they'd
begun as students at Carnegie Mellon in the
mid-1980s: the search
for one of the oldest holy grails in artificial
intelligence--a
machine that could beat any human chess player
in a bona fide
match. Back in 1949 science had conceived
the foundations of
modern chess computers but not until almost
fifty years later--until
Deep Blue--would the quest be realized.
Hsu refutes Kasparov's controversial claim
that only human
intervention could have allowed Deep Blue
to make its decisive,
"uncomputerlike" moves. In riveting
detail he describes
the heightening tension in this war of brains
and nerves, the
"smoldering fire" in Kasparov's
eyes. Behind Deep Blue
is not just another tale of man versus machine.
This fascinating
book tells us how man as genius was given
an ultimate,
unforgettable run for his mind, no, not by
the genius of a
computer, but of man as toolmaker.
Feng-hsiung Hsu is the founding father of
the Deep Blue project.
He began it in 1985 as a graduate student
at Carnegie Mellon
University. From 1989 to 1997 he worked as
the system architect
and chip designer for the Deep Blue Chess
machine at IBM's T. J.
Watson Research Center. He is now a senior
researcher at
Microsoft Research Asia.
Reviews:
"Mr. Hsu manages to make seemingly dry,
technical material
vivid and gripping, even for readers without
a background in
chess or computers. And his story is a fascinating
study, of men
as well as machines."--Christopher F.
Chabris, The Wall
Street Journal
"Hsu's account is written in an easy,
flowing style, and, as
he says, it is rather light-hearted. . .
. The point that Hsu
makes is that building and programming a
computer that can
calculate 2 million chess moves a second
is not frivolous . . .
All science is a kind of play, in the sense
of a play of mind. .
. . Most of Behind Deep Blue is Hsu's tale
of encountering and
overcoming obstacles in the design and programming
of the
computer to enable it to play chess like
a human being. The
technical aspects of both computers and chess
will be fully
comprehensible only to those with the appropriate
experience and
skill. The human story, though, is clear
and exciting: dversity
encountered, challenges met, all with the
human elements of pride
and anxiety and triumph. And the human elements,
too, of anger
and resentment."--Anthony Day, Los Angeles
Times
"This book tells the gripping story
of the construction,
programming, preparation and use of the Deep
Blue chess machine
and its predecessors. It proves on every
page the authoršs
claim that computer scientists are human
too, and they do like to
have fun. The fun will be shared by the reader
who has no prior
knowledge of chess or of computer science."--Tony
Hoare,
Times Higher Education Supplement
"A chess-playing machine rather than
a mere program, Deep
Blue drew its awesome power from chips designed
by Hsu to do
nothing but play chess. The IBM team put
256 of these processors
into a supercomputer, allowing it to analyze
at least 100 million
chess positions a second."--Nell Boyce,
U.S. News and World
Report
"A fascinating account of the IBM computer
and the match,
written by its programmer."--Lubomir
Kavalek, The Washington
Post
More reviews
Table of Contents:
Preface i
Acknowledgements v
Chess Notation viii
CHAPTER 1: Prologue: Show Time! 1
CHAPTER 2: Carnegie Mellon: An Office of
Troublemakers 6
CHAPTER 3: Taking the Plunge 17
CHAPTER 4: The Chess Machine That Wasn't
43
CHAPTER 5: The Race for First Machine Grandmaster
66
CHAPTER 6: "Knock, Knock. Who's There?"
87
CHAPTER 7: Intermezzo: First Date with History
102
CHAPTER 8: IBM: We Need a New Name 120
CHAPTER 9: Bringing up the Baby 138
CHAPTER 10: A Living Mount Everest 157
CHAPTER 11: Retooling 181
CHAPTER 12: The Holy Grail 199
CHAPTER 13: Epilogue: Life After Chess 256
APPENDIX A: A Lad from Taiwan 270
APPENDIX B: Selected Game Scores 285
APPENDIX C: Further Reading 290
Index 293
Subject Areas:
Mathematics
History of Science and Medicine, Philosophy
of Science
Physics
Cloth | March 2004 | ISBN: 0-691-11445-5
352 pp. | 6 x 9 | 18 halftones.
Karl Pearson, founder of modern statistics,
came to this field by
way of passionate early studies of philosophy
and cultural
history as well as ether physics and graphical
geometry. His
faith in science grew out of a deeply moral
quest, reflected also
in his socialism and his efforts to find
a new basis for
relations between men and women. This biography
recounts
Pearson's extraordinary intellectual adventure
and sheds new
light on the inner life of science.
Theodore Porter's intensely personal portrait
of Pearson extends
from religious crisis and sexual tensions
to metaphysical and
even mathematical anxieties. Pearson sought
to reconcile reason
with enthusiasm and to achieve the impersonal
perspective of
science without sacrificing complex individuality.
Even as he
longed to experience nature directly and
intimately, he
identified science with renunciation and
positivistic detachment.
Porter finds a turning point in Pearson's
career, where his
humanistic interests gave way to statistical
ones, in his Grammar
of Science (1892), in which he attempted
to establish scientific
method as the moral educational basis for
a refashioned culture.
In this original and engaging book, a leading
historian of modern
science investigates the interior experience
of one man's
scientific life while placing it in a rich
tapestry of social,
political, and intellectual movements.
Theodore Porter is Professor of History at
UCLA and author of The
Rise of Statistical Thinking and Trust in
Numbers (both Princeton)
Endorsements:
"Karl Pearson was one of the most significant
architects of
modern statistics. In this remarkable book,
Theodore Porter
superbly captures the romance (and seldom
has the use of this
word been so appropriate) of Karl Pearson's
early flirtation with
philosophy and the tortured path that led
him to statistics."--Stephen
Stigler, University of Chicago
"Brilliant! Karl Pearson is fortunate
to have a biographer
who saves him from what he most abhorred:
his fear that a life
could be reduced to a mere discovery, stripped
of all its
personal and historical specificity. "--Ken
Alder,
Northwestern University, author of The Measure
of All Things
3rd ed., 2004, Approx. 800 p. 90 illus.,
Hardcover
ISBN: 0-387-20571-3
Due: May 2004
About this book
This book documents the history of pi from
the dawn of
mathematical time to the present. One of
the beauties of the
literature on pi is that it allows for the
inclusion of very
modern, yet accessible, mathematics. The
articles on pi collected
herein include selections from the mathematical
and computational
literature over four millennia, a variety
of historical studies
on the cultural significance of the number,
and an assortment of
anecdotal, fanciful, and simply amusing pieces.
For this new
edition, the authors have updated the original
material while
adding new material of historical and cultural
interest. There is
a substantial exposition of the recent history
of the computation
of digits of pi, a discussion of the normality
of the
distribution of the digits, new translations
of works by Viete
and Huygen, as well as Kaplansky's never-before-published
"Song
of Pi." From the reviews of earlier
editions: "Few
mathematics books serve a wider potential
readership than does a
source book and this particular one is admirably
designed to
cater for a broad spectrum of tastes: professional
mathematicians
with research interest in related subjects,
historians of
mathematics, teachers at all levels searching
out material for
individual talks and student projects, and
amateurs who will find
much to amuse and inform them in this leafy
tome. The authors are
to be congratulated on their good taste in
preparing such a rich
and varied banquet with which to celebrate
pi."- Roger
Webster for the Bulletin of the LMS "The
judicious
representative selection makes this a useful
addition to one's
library as a reference book, an enjoyable
survey of developments
and a source of elegant and deep mathematics
of different eras."-
Ed Barbeau for MathSciNet "Full of useful
formulas and
ideas, it is a vast source of inspiration
to any mathematician, A
level and upwards-a necessity in any maths
library."- New
Scientist
Written for:
Mathematicians, historians of mathematics,
computer scientists,
mathematics teachers, amateurs
Table of contents
Preface.- Acknowledgements.- Introduction.-
The Rhind
Mathematical Papyrus-Problem 50.- Engles.
Quadrature of the
Circle in Ancient Egypt.- Archimedes. Measurement
of a Circle.-
Phillips. Archimedes the Numerical Analyst.-
Lam & Ang.
Circle Measurements in Ancient China.- The
Banu Musa: The
Measurement of Plane and Solid Figures.-
Madhava's. The Power
Series for Arctan and Pi.- Hope-Jones. Ludolph
van Ceulen.- Viete.
Variorum de Revus Mathematicis Reponsorum
Liber VII.- Wallis.
Computation of Pi by Successive Interpolations.-
Wallis.
Arithmetica Infinitorum.- Huygens. De Circuli
Magnitudine Inventa.-
Gregory. Correspondence with John Collins.-
Jones. The First Use
of Pi for the Circle Ratio.- Newton. Of The
Method of Fluxions
and Infinite Series.- Euler. Chapter 10 of
Introduction to
Analysis of the Infinite.- Lambert. Memoire
Sur Quelques
Proprietes Remarquables Des Quantites Transcendentes
Circulaires
et Logarithmiques.- Lambert. Irrationality
of Pi.- Shanks.
Contributions to Mathematics Comprising Chiefly
of the
Rectification of the Circle to 607 Places
of Decimals.- Hermite.
Sur La Fonction Exponentielle.- And much
more...